Many people compare Mexico’s war on the drug cartels to the United States’ fight against Iraq’s insurgents. There are many parallels: both cartels and the insurgents are not clearly delineated entities but sprawling networks with an impressive degree of weapon and strategy sophistication; both cartels and the insurgents count on a substantial level of support, or at least allowance, from ordinary citizens; Mexico and the US is trying to win the war with a strategy based on one-upsmanship, rather than diplomacy or good old fashioned deal-making.
In Ciudad Juarez, the same effect the surge had on Iraq is coming to bare. President Calderon ordered over 5,000 additional troops to reaffirm rule of law in this city a jog away from the United States. Drug-related violence is down, stability is slowly blooming, and the residents of Juarez are breathing a bit easier.
From The Washington Post:
In the first two months of this year, 434 people were killed in drug violence in the city, accounting for nearly half of all homicides nationwide. After 5,000 additional troops were sent to Juarez in early March, the number of deaths dropped to 51 last month. Twenty-two people have died in drug violence so far in April.
[...]Julio Salazar, who runs a youth sports program in Casas Grandes, said: “You can’t really imagine how it was here before: the violence, people selling drugs out in the open. There isn’t so much chaos anymore.”
“The violence is pretty much gone,” said Agustín Vargas, a thin, 24-year-old soccer player who described himself as a reformed ex-gang member. “There used to be murders all over the place, people shooting. It’s changed.”
But as with anything that sounds so winning, there’s a flip side. Human rights violations have spiked tremendously in the last couple of months. The Mexican military is currently under investigation for allegedly beating two suspects to death. With ultimate power in their hands, the military can arrest, raid, and give tickets to anyone they suspect of doing fishy business.
The ultra-secret legal system behind the cartel war is a brainchild of President Calderon and his cabinet. It is so secret, that even government lawyers do not know who they are presenting their case to:
Calderón’s deployment of the military to fight the cartels has dramatically changed the way law enforcement works in Mexico. The army is authorized to make arrests only when a suspect is believed to be in the process of committing a crime.
However, the government has erected a largely secret legal apparatus that allows commanders to conduct raids, arrest suspects and initiate wiretaps after presenting evidence to local prosecutors. The prosecutors, in turn, submit petitions for arrest and search warrants over a secure Web site to a panel of anonymous judges in Mexico City.
“We know [the judges] exist, but they work in a place that is unknown to the public,” said Héctor García Rodríguez, a representative of the federal attorney general’s office in Juarez. “I don’t even know who they are.”
This is now Calderon’s war like Iraq will always be Bush’s war. He is micro-managing this so much that it will have his fingerprint for as long as it lasts. More than anything else, this will define his legacy. Unlike Bush, this war was started with a concrete and noble goal in mind, but possibly poor execution throughout. Bush had both wrong, and history is only so forgiving.
source: Washington Post
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